


ring of fire

by playingprince



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Blood and Violence, Drug Use, Graphic Description of Corpses, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Physical Abuse, Prostitution, Survival, i would not describe the violence as graphic or gratuitous but it's definitely there, mostly gun stuff, this one's heavy please take the tags seriously, will add tags as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:07:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26270890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingprince/pseuds/playingprince
Summary: Mark has a half-tank of gas, one bullet left, a strange boy on the back of his bike.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Mark Lee
Comments: 28
Kudos: 91





	ring of fire

**Author's Note:**

> hello!
> 
> please read the tags -- you have been warned. as usual, if you've read from me before, i like to think i keep things mostly tasteful. none of the violence/sexual content/etc. is extremely graphic, but it's there. this fic references abuse and sexual assault. there is also some drug use (not by the main characters). tags will be added as the story continues should i feel they're needed.
> 
> this fic was inspired by _the road_ by cormac mccarthy. if you've read it, you know what the vibe is. the general idea/worldbuilding came from there, but i also haven't read that book in like six years so it's safe to say this is mostly original/its own thing.
> 
> i think that's all the preamble? hope you enjoy!
> 
>  **warnings specific to this chapter:** strong violence, death/dead bodies, references to sex/prostitution, referenced abuse

Mark loaded his pistol in front of the motel gates.

He didn’t trust any place like this one, because a gate kept you out, but it kept you in, too. If Johnny had taught him anything, it was that you should always have an escape route. He planned his now, scanning the chainlinks that stretched ten feet high. Barbed wire had been fixed all along the top, which meant it would be trouble to scale — the pain of cuts would be bearable, but the potential of his shirt or pants getting stuck on a prong was too dangerous. He stepped away from his motorcycle to study the base of the fence. No holes in the links, no burrow beneath from a fox or a coyote. The people here kept their property in top shape.

Mark’s final resort was always his gun. He preferred not to use it, but it was a long drive to another layover, and the rattle in his bike’s engine was too loud to ignore. This would have to be it, escape route be damned. If his bike died on the road, then he would be trapped there, too. And then, he wouldn’t have any gate to keep trouble out. It was a calculated risk. A small part of him hoped the motel owners could be good people. The rest of him knew that good people no longer existed.

There wasn’t a button to push to buzz him in, because there wasn’t electricity. Instead, a bell sat at the top of one of the gateposts, with a long string trailing down from it for guests to pull and announce their arrival. He did. It issued a thin wail of a chime, like a gutted rabbit’s squeal.

Five minutes passed. Mark could see a light turn on in the closest unit of the motel, and then the door open as a square figure trudged over the ashen ground. He could see the rifle the man wielded from a distance, its barrel long and poking out from the silhouette like an antler. The rest of him came into focus: middle-aged, hollow-eyed, slash of a mouth with thin, nothing-at-all lips. He had a gut, but it was loose and hanging, a reservoir ran dry.

“One hundred a night,” he said. His lungs sounded like they were filled with rocks.

“I have it,” Mark said.

“Show me.”

Mark raised his fist, a crumpled hundred-dollar bill inside it.

The man grunted, then undid the lock on the gate’s other side. With great effort, he began to open it, fingers straining in the links. Mark helped without being asked, pushing in with his shoulder until the gap was large enough to walk his bike through.

Once the gate was reconfigured, they crossed the empty yard to the unit from which the man had emerged. Up close, Mark could see it was partially the motel’s lobby, partially the man’s residence. A short desk sat directly in front of the front door, so close it could barely swing open. Beyond it was what might be called a living room, consisting of an armchair straight out of the 70s bearing faded green and orange stripes, and a dusty coffee table. There was a bare, clean ring where a glass might have sat, melting the dust with its condensation. In the far back was the kitchen, mostly bare. There was a refrigerator, probably used as an extra cabinet, since most of the actual cabinets did not have doors. In front was a square dining table with only one chair. A woman sat in it, the man’s wife, Mark guessed. She glared at him as she poked at a thousand piece puzzle. It was only partially arranged, showing half the head of a kitten perched in a bow-clad basket. Off from the kitchen to the right was a dark doorway which Mark could not see down.

The man placed his rifle against the wall. Courteously, Mark slid his pistol into his belt.

“One hundred,” the man said again.

Mark handed the bill over. The man shoved it into his back pocket.

“Room in the last row, second floor. C-22.” He held out a small silver key.

Mark took it. The man said nothing else. Mark glanced once more at the woman, who still glared at him, and gave her a defiantly polite nod as he pushed back out into the gated yard.

It was late evening, nearing the end of what should have been the mild Californian winter. But the dense blanket of clouds, which seemed to be unmovable like a dome over the earth, had made it harsher than usual. Mark wheeled his bike over the rough, untended ground (though there was no overgrown grass to deal with; only the uneven dirt which was softened by recent rain). The C-row of rooms was the furthest from the lobby. It was one of those motels built in lines, two floors to each one and an exterior staircase leading to the second-floor doors. Mark looked up at the windows above him. Most of them were dark — empty, he suspected — except for three he counted, where dim lights could be seen shining through. One traveled in its square like it was on the end of a match. Perhaps someone lighting a cigarette, or the end of a bowl.

Mark was not happy to be leaving his bike in the open — he half considered finding a way to lug it up the metal stairs with him, except they did not look sturdy enough to support the weight. He had to park it against the motel wall and pray that no one came to investigate and try and rob it for parts. Parts could sell for a lot. Mark knew it too well. It was the reason his wallet would be hurting for a while. He double-checked that the beneath-the-seat cargo was locked and left it there.

C-22 was above his head, on the second floor walk. On the way to the stairs, he passed a boy, who sat on one of the cement parking blocks smoking a cigarette. The boy watched him the same way the woman had, dark-circled eyes tracing Mark like a cat’s tracing a mouse. Mark was used to it by now — people didn’t smile at strangers anymore. He ignored it and went up the rattly-jointed stairs to his room.

The lock was rusty. Mark had to force the key into the hole and push all his weight down onto it, arms shaking with the strain. The door burst open as though he’d kicked it. Dust flew up from the old carpet, and probably some mildew, too, judging from the smell. He shut the door and locked it again, and then for good measure, he dragged the dresser in front of it. There would be no way to tell what kind of people might be around. Better extra safe than sorry.

Inside the nightstand drawer, there was no holy book or phonebook, but a book of matches. He pulled them out. On the window sill was a well-used candle, wick crispy black. It thankfully lit up, and Mark could see the room a little clearer. Broken radiator, pea-green armchair, queen-sized bed with no pillows. He jabbed the end of it with his toe, and an earwig scampered out, over the bare mattress and back into it through a tear. It was impossible to sleep without company these days.

Out of curiosity, he moved into the bathroom. It was filthy, with greenish grime crawling up the white tile walls like moss on a tree. There was an ant-filled tub and a toilet with a broken tank. Mark slipped his hand behind the shower curtain to try the knob. Nothing happened for a moment, then there was a noisy splutter as rust-colored liquid slopped from the tub faucet like vomit. It stunk of metal and something acidic. Mark wrinkled his nose, switched the knob back off, and went back into the bedroom.

He set the candle and his pistol on the nightstand, and eased himself onto the bed as gently as he could, trying to disturb as few vermin as possible. There was one blanket, and it smelled like piss, but it was too cold to go without. He pulled it up to his chin, shivering against it. He was exhausted. It had been a long drive that day, still heading south then east around L.A., trying to avoid the city. He’d been traveling up the west coast, all the way to Washington, but he felt he’d bled it of everything it could offer him. So he’d come back down, past his hometown near Sacramento, and now he was turning to the east. He’d heard something on the way, about a place in New England where things were peaceful and growing anew. Some place the ash hadn’t touched so harshly. The people there grew crops and lived in small cabins and had the closest thing to happiness one could ask for. He almost did not believe it; it sounded like El Dorado, like a work of fiction. He was pulled towards it, anyway. It wasn’t as if he had anything to lose.

He fell asleep, dreaming about ocean waves and green grass and the quiet of a town without gunshots.

—

And he woke just a couple of hours later, too freezing to sleep through it.

The single blanket was not enough. He touched his own skin and found it covered in goosebumps, so cold it almost felt wet. He rubbed his arms but it didn’t help.

To get his body temperature back up, he got up and walked around the middle of his room. It got the blood pumping again, bringing a little warmth back to his face and his fingers. He didn’t know what time it was. He went to the window, as if he might be able to tell by the state of the night sky.

It was pitch black out. No stars, no moon. He could barely see anything aside from his own reflection, showing him his too-hollow cheeks and hard flint eyes. The only thing he could pick out in the dark was the white of the boy’s t-shirt. He was still sitting there on the parking block, and if Mark was cold in his room, then the boy must have been solid ice, wearing only a thin tee and ripped-up jeans.

Mark pushed open his window. The bitter breeze hit his face like it was trying to push him back inside.

“What are you doing?” he called down.

The boy turned and looked up at him. His face was almost as pale as his shirt. “Do you have any cigarettes?”

“I’m not a smoker.”

The boy immediately lost interest, and turned back around.

Mark kept watching his hunched shoulders and pink ears.

He pushed the dresser from in front of the door, drew his hands up into the sleeves of his jacket to keep them warm, and made his way down the stairs.

“What are you doing?” he asked again, standing at the end of the parking block. In front of them was a long stretch of nothingness, and then the gate. Between the chainlinks was a small wood. The absence of cricket chirps or birdcall made it seem uninhabited. Nothing more than twisted trees and dead leaves. “It’s too cold to be sitting out here.”

“Working,” the boy said. He perched his chin on his arms, which were folded on top of his knees. His arms were skeletal thin and bone white. They looked so breakable, like Mark could snap and splinter them with only one hand.

“Working?”

“Waiting to see if anyone else comes in. Or if anyone comes down from their rooms.” Moving slowly and with purpose, he unfolded himself, legs extended over the concrete and shoulders back. It wasn’t just his arms that were skinny. The t-shirt hung loosely, three sizes too big, draping over and emphasizing the dips of his ribs. “Are you bored?” he asked.

It took Mark far too long to realize that the boy was a prostitute. He always avoided prostitutes because he had no interest in them. They were too expensive, and after a moment of pleasure, you were left with nothing but the risk of a disease or a robbery. The vast majority of prostitutes these days were young men, like the one sitting before Mark now. Contraception was impossible to find. Those who could bear babies could not be prostitutes without risking pregnancy, which was the same as risking death with so few doctors, and the babies usually died anyway. Prostitutes usually died, too, regardless of sex — someday, inevitably, there would come an angry client who just wanted a chance to shoot a gun or wring a neck. Prostitution was only for the reckless, or those not given a choice.

There wasn’t anything coy about the boy, like Mark might have expected. The way he was looking at Mark now was decidedly unseductive, half-lidded eyes a sign of exhaustion instead of enticement.

When Mark didn’t answer him, the boy closed himself off again. “I knew you didn’t seem the type,” he said. He rubbed his hands together, breathing onto them, the first sign he’d shown of being cold. When he breathed and his lips rounded, Mark thought there was something attractive about it, but not in a sensual way. He thought he could see a flicker of life there, like the boy was blowing on an ember, willing it to catch.

“Come up with me,” Mark said.

The boy raised his brows at being proven wrong, but didn’t hesitate before getting up, stretching to loosen his cramped joints, and following Mark back up to his room.

As soon as Mark opened the door, the boy walked into the middle of the room and whirled around, facing Mark with a cool expression. He’d done this at least a hundred times. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “You’d better have cash on you. I want my money first.”

“I don’t want to have sex with you,” Mark said.

The boy looked completely insulted, as if Mark had just spat in his face. “Then you’re wasting my time. What the hell did you tell me to come up for?”

“I thought you’d want somewhere warm to sleep.”

“No. I need to make money. I won’t make any money curled up on your bed.”

He said it very casually, but Mark thought he could hear the slightest bit of strain behind the words _I need to make money._ His life depended on it.

“Then I’ll pay you,” Mark said. He dug in his back pocket and produced his wallet. “How much?”

The boy paused. He was surprised at the kindness, though not weakened. “Two hundred dollars,” he said.

“Two hundred?” Mark asked incredulously. He had a decent amount stashed away, but that would make a big dent. He needed that money to fix his bike.

“If you wanted me to suck you off it would be fifty, ‘cuz I could do it and be on my merry way. But you want to watch me sleep all night apparently, and that’s a lot of my time, so it’s two hundred.” The boy held out his hand expectantly.

The phrase _suck you off_ had never sounded so unsexy, Mark thought. The boy said it with the same cadence that one might say, “I’m going to the store to buy milk and eggs.”

Mark pulled two hundred dollar bills from his wallet, slowly and painfully like he was pulling his own teeth, and handed them over.

The boy rubbed them between his fingers, trying to assess whether they were real or not. Seemingly satisfied, he tucked them into his pocket. “Where do you want me to sleep? The tub or something?”

“The bed, if you want. I can sleep in the chair.”

He was surprised again. “You’re crazy,” he said.

“Maybe,” Mark said. He grabbed his pistol off the nightstand and brought it with him to the chair, stuffing the barrel into the crack between the cushion and the frame. He curled himself on top of it, trying to angle his head as comfortably as he could.

There was a thump as the boy’s body hit the bed. He was sprawled across it, lying on his stomach, cheek pressed to the crumpled blanket like it was a pillow. He watched Mark, untrusting but unafraid. He may have seemed fragile, but the look in his eyes was tough as nails.

“What?” Mark said.

“I don’t know. I thought you were gonna pull something. You still might.”

“I won’t.”

“Why not?”

Mark could feel the hard handle of his pistol against his thigh. He wondered if he had killed more people than the boy had slept with. He’d certainly killed a lot of them. He wasn’t quite numb to it — he never would be — but he did it anyway. There was no avoiding it, and no going back.

For once, he wanted to do something good. He wanted to know that he was still a good person, despite everything.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Renjun,” the boy said.

“Is that Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“Do you speak Chinese?”

“Not really.”

Mark tilted his head back further, peering between the small gap in the window curtains. He could see the candlelight in the motel lobby, the only bit of gold in the black-blue of the dead night. It must have been at least three AM. They probably left the light on all night. Across the front yard, the lock rattled against the gate.

“This is a weird place,” Mark murmured.

“Is it?” Renjun said. He was still staring at Mark. Dark hair ink-spilled over the bed. Dark eyes hollowed like bullet holes. Fingers knotted into the blanket, tense enough that they trembled, the need for nicotine shaking him like a fist around his arm.

“Go to sleep,” Mark said.

Renjun kept staring.

Mark stared back. It was so quiet, he thought he could hear the wallpaper peeling around him.

He nodded off first. He did not find out if Renjun ever slept himself; the boy was gone when Mark woke early the next morning, blanket collapsed on the floor like a corpse.

—

The motorcycle was untouched, Mark realized with a relieved sigh. He walked it away from the motel wall and propped it on its kickstand in the middle of the empty parking lot. The rumble in the engine had persisted for weeks. If he didn’t fix it soon, he was worried the bike might break down all together. It would be no easy task to find another after that.

He unlocked the cargo. It wasn’t a large space, but he managed to squeeze a lot into it. Four cans of food (pineapple, beans, two Spam), a tightly folded tarp, a canteen, a fork, a jackknife, two wrenches and two screwdrivers, matches, and in a shallow tin, his only luxuries — a bar of soap and a razor. He could have tossed them to make more room, but they made him feel more human. A little piece of civilization to cling to.

He took his tools and set to work. The engine cover was removed and set on the concrete. Like this, he revved the engine and watched it. He did it sparingly, for one thing not wanting to attract attention with all the noise, and for another, not wanting to waste gas. Gasoline was expensive, so expensive it might have made having a vehicle unworth it altogether. Mark was used to forking over upwards of thirty dollars per gallon. You could not buy it at a pump. It was sold instead at Gashouses, where it was kept and carefully guarded inside canisters. The Gashouses were owned by the Drughouses, just like nearly everything was. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out the very land he was standing on belonged to a Drughouse, and was only being loaned out to the man in the lobby. As the name suggested, they got their money from drug production and sales, mostly of meth, but heroin and cocaine for those who could afford it, too. If Mark passed another vehicle on the road, it was usually a Drughouse car, because they had the gas and the consumer demand to transport their goods for miles. Mark had never tried meth. If he had, Johnny would have put a bullet between his eyes, because once you tried meth, you were as good as dead.

The cam chain squealed in its track. Mark shut off the gas and leaned a hand on the bike seat, rubbing his chin. There was an outpost a few miles from the motel, out towards L.A. It was possible there would be a parts dealer there, and Mark could use some more supplies for the road anyway. He pulled out his wallet and counted his bills. Three hundred and forty dollars. He swore, regretting the money he’d given Renjun last night, wondering when he’d become so weak to another person’s suffering. Suffering was universal. It was the new normal.

Lunch was his can of beans, eaten cold on the parking block. He watched out the chainlinks of the gate, to the empty road and the murky, yellow-cloud sky. The ash had kicked up in the distance, smudging out the horizon. It tossed like sand on the wind, funneling into a short dustdevil before being dispersed. This was the closest thing there was to TV — the ash dancing, up, down, tumbling sideways, never the same twice. It reminded Mark of his old lava lamp he’d kept on his nightstand, the purple one with the swirling bubbles he’d watch to fall asleep. He’d used to like to imagine he was inside the lava lamp, bubbles cushioning him, the faint flow of the water like a lullaby.

Once he disposed of his empty can (tossing it under one of the motel staircases), he replaced the engine cover on his bike and climbed on. He rode it to the gate, where he rang the bell again to call for the man in the lobby to let him out.

“Coming back?” the man grunted.

“Yeah. In an hour or two, I expect.”

The man undid the lock. Mark did not miss the wary look in his eye, like he thought Mark might be a criminal. If that was what he was thinking, he would be correct. But it was hard to draw the distinction these days when there was little law to abide by, and more criminals than decent folk. Mark wondered if he could be decent and a criminal at the same time.

He passed through the gate and sped down the empty road. The forest melted into empty, rocky outcroppings stacked like shelves around him. The air carried a faint burnt scent as if there was a wildfire nearby but unseen; that was simply the way everything smelled now, like flames stamped out with a leather boot.

He drove ten miles without passing another person. It might have made him feel lonely, but he took comfort in the empty roads. It meant he was safe. And despite everything, he still felt a sense of freedom in being able to travel as he pleased. He was not trapped or tied down. He had no family to be obligated to. He remembered this sometimes with a painful pang, but it was better that way. His family did not deserve to live in a harsh world like this one. He’d used to believe in heaven, and whether it was real or not, he hoped they'd found their way there. If nothing else, it was far, far away from the bloodshed of the streets.

The outpost came into view. It was nothing more than three buildings at an intersection. One of the telephone poles on the corner was down, cutting off one arm of the intersection seemingly intentionally. Maybe someone had moved it there to discourage travelers. To his left was an old market, its sign still perched above the front doors but the text smeared and beaten so badly it was illegible. It seemed to still be semi-functional — a man stood just inside the entry with a rifle in his hands, next to a newer sign which read, “Store Hours, 2PM - 6PM,” a slot which Mark had luckily arrived within. Across the street from it was a former car garage. Its windows had been covered with cardboard. Out front of it was a patchily constructed stand, all the boards at different lengths. A piece of cardboard was pasted here, too, and bore the words, “Scavenged Goods.” A bearded man smoked on the garage steps, watching Mark from his single eye. The third building across the intersection was once an ice cream shop. A giant cone hovered above it on a pole, a pop of uneasy pink among the muted backdrop. The front door was broken on its hinges, and the neon sign that had once hung from it smashed on the ground.

Mark detoured to the market first. The man only let him inside after Mark showed him his wallet and left his pistol on one of the defunct grocery belts. The produce aisle was empty of course, as were the deli and freezer sections. The canned goods were partially stocked, and coated thickly in dust — leftover goods from before disaster. They’d been picked over by other customers, but Mark was able to nab two more cans of beans and two of corned beef hash. The total for the four was twenty-five dollars. Mark handed the money over to the man, and asked casually, “This your place?”

“It is now,” the man said. He was thirty or so, hair choppily buzzed, dark under-eye circles like tattoos.

 _What he means to say is that he claimed it,_ Mark thought. _He's a Squatter_. _Snapped the place up as soon as he found it abandoned. Probably moved the corpses out into the street and let the vultures have them._ He realized the absurdity of paying for goods that hadn’t belonged to the man in the first place, but this was the order of things now, and the glint of the rifle barrel in the light from the window spoke louder than words.

He took back his pistol and crossed the street to the Scavenger’s stand. On the rickety table he could see an assortment of goods: more cans, a gun, a hairbrush, four cigarettes in a plastic bag, a few blankets, some clothes in different sizes, a chipped set of bowls. The man at this stand was not like the man in the market. He noticed Mark’s pistol at his belt but didn’t acknowledge it. Clearly, he was used to danger and unflinching in front of it, or perhaps too savvy to think that Mark posed any real threat. He ran his gray tongue over his teeth as Mark stopped in front of him.

“Do you have any bike parts?” Mark asked.

“Might. What are you looking for?” His empty eye socket was sealed shut by a crusted scar. His other eye seemed too large, watery and blank like a fish’s eye.

“A cam chain. Mine’s worn out.”

The man blinked his bulging eye. “You can come look. There’s some parts inside.”

“Fine.”

He followed the man up the steps into the garage’s side entrance. When the door opened, Mark could smell car oil and rust, so pungent it burned the back of his throat. He covered his mouth with the back of his sleeve and stepped down into the belly of the garage, where tools still hung on the walls from nails and parts littered the benches like the mechanics had disappeared on the job, sucked up and vanishing into the air.

Like the market man, Mark suspected this man had found this garage and claimed it. The name Scavenger said it all. He took from empty houses, then sold his findings to travelers and survivors who lived holed up in their homes. Mark knew the work well. He did it himself, clearing abandoned towns up the west coast, then exchanging the findings. Scavengers would sometimes barter for other goods since it was more practical, though Mark usually preferred cash; the Gashouses only accepted cash, perhaps in an attempt to maintain their illusion of legitimacy. Technically, cash was not worth anything these days. No gold to back it up. But the way Mark figured, gold was only worth anything because people had decided it in the first place, so why couldn’t they simply decide paper bills were worth something, too? That was how it worked now. Men still valued money over everything, even at the end of the world.

Mark trailed his finger along one of the tables, searching. There were mostly car parts, strewn about like the innards of a gutted pig. He prodded them uselessly, wishing he could magic them into what he needed.

“See what you need?” the man called. He still stood on the stairs, eye tracing Mark like an owl’s. It made Mark distinctly uneasy.

“No — I’ll keep looking,” he said, moving into another room and hoping he’d be able to escape the intense, laser-like burn of the man’s gaze. This room was very dark, ill-lit away from the door. He felt along the wall, fingertips nudging the edges of wrenches. There seemed to be a box near his feet. He bent and poked around inside it, feeling curved metal but unable to tell what it was.

Footsteps approached behind him. It was the man, but Mark had a bad feeling about it. His gut was the mostly finely tuned tool he had at his disposal. He always listened to it. Now, it drove him to find the handle of his pistol, pulling it from his belt and readying it near his hip. He listened. The footsteps were closer, and slower, like the man was preparing to pounce.

A shadow bolted through the door. Mark snapped up to standing and fired a shot. The bang rattled his bones and his eardrums. It made it so he could not hear whether or not a body hit the ground. The answer came in the next second, at a slice of pain along the back of his hand. He dropped his pistol in recoil, a searing hiss escaping his lips. Before another bullet could bite him, he dropped to the ground, searching for his pistol in the dark. He could not find it. The man moved somewhere ahead of him, taking another shot but missing.

Mark’s wounded hand hit the wall with a painful jolt. He hauled himself upright, fingers closing around one of the wrenches. A big one — a lug wrench, Mark realized, knuckles closing over its X — and at least three pounds. He tore it off its nail and swung it behind him with all the strength he had. The first swing did not connect. The second did, eliciting a hoarse groan and the sound of knees smacking the concrete floor. Mark kept swinging. He gritted his teeth at the sound of metal smacking flesh, cracking bone. He didn’t stop until the man was silent beneath him.

The cold, dank garage air filled Mark’s throat as he sucked in a desperate breath. He allowed himself a few seconds to regroup, then felt for the front of the man’s shirt. His hand slipped beneath the jacket to the inside pocket. He could still feel the man’s chest heaving, meaning he was not dead but close to it. Mark grimaced and pulled a book of matches from the man’s pocket. It took several tries to get a match to light, a challenging combination of the dark and his trembling hands.

The flame caught. He could see the man before him. The wrench had busted open the side of his face and dented his skull. His eye had become an egg with a broken yolk, open and spilling a cloudy liquid onto the floor. Mark couldn't handle it. He stumbled to the far corner and wretched. He wretched until there was nothing left, just foul-tasting water. He spit, wiped his mouth, then turned away from his grizzly work and forced himself to finish what he’d come there to do. He found his pistol in the corner and slipped it back into his belt. Then he grabbed the edge of the box he’d been poking at before, and dragged it through the doorway and back into the main area of the garage.

As he dug through the spare parts, his blood spilled from the wound on the back of his hand, dotting the metal like rust. At the bottom was a narrow chain. He dislodged it, making the other parts clatter on top of it. Then he ran back up the stairs, out the door to the intersection.

His bike still sat near the Scavenger stand. Mark took the opportunity to raid it, grabbing a thin shirt to wrap around his hand, the cans of food, and, impulsively, the bag of cigarettes. It occurred to him that had he not fought back, his clothes and his gun and his bike might have ended up for sale at that stand. Scavengers were only supposed to take what was abandoned, not force items into abandonment by killing their owner — it was a rule Mark abided by strictly. He spat in the direction of the garage and the dying man, and started up the engine of his bike.

—

Mark did not continue to work on his motorcycle when he returned to the motel. His hand was too sore and he didn’t want to risk an infection, so he took his canteen and a can of pineapples from his stash and went straight up to his room.

He stood over the bathroom sink. Sparingly, he poured water from his canteen over the graze. It stung, but with the blood washed away he could get a better look at the wound. It stretched over three of his knuckles, skin torn away by the slicing bullet. As soon as he stopped pouring, the blood kept coming. He rewrapped the shirt around it, tying it tight to try and stop the bleeding.

Lately, he’d only been eating one meal a day, but since he’d gotten some extras for free, Mark permitted himself dinner by the window. He snapped the top of the pineapple can and ate it with his fork. TV was back on, ash swirling like a sandstorm. Mark watched it until the sun sank, and the night sky swallowed it.

He nearly nodded off there, arms crossed on the window sill. He blinked back into awareness to find the light on in the motel lobby, and Renjun sitting on the parking block below him, just as he had the night before.

Mark opened the window.

Renjun must have heard it, because before Mark said anything, he performed his line again, this time with a wry edge: “Do you have any cigarettes?”

“Yes,” Mark said.

“You do?” Renjun nearly slipped off the edge of the block. He seemed to think it was a joke.

“I have four of them. Do you want them?”

“Yeah.”

Mark grabbed the bag from the top of the dresser and made his way downstairs.

“Here,” he said, thrusting it into Renjun’s arms. Renjun snapped it open and tucked a cigarette between his half-smiling lips, like he could already taste the tobacco. He looked up at Mark expectantly. “Light?”

“Oh — there’s some matches in my room.”

“Why would you bring me cigarettes and no matches?”

“You can come up and get some.”

The half-smile stretched into a smirk. “I suppose you want me in your bed again?”

Mark hadn’t been thinking that. It was a milder night tonight, and frankly he was looking forward to sleeping on a mattress instead of cramped in the chair. But here was Renjun again, sitting in the parking and waiting for someone to trade their cash for a lay. No one should have to do that, Mark thought. It was only a matter of time before Renjun ended up on the mattress that would cradle his throat-slit body and soak up his blood.

“I can’t pay you again,” Mark said.

“I think you already did.” Renjun shook the cigarette baggy, eyes shut like crinkle it made was music to his ears.

Mark led Renjun back up the stairs to his room.

The curtains in the motel lobby fluttered.

The matches were by the candle on the nightstand. Mark retrieved them and struck one up, lighting their faces hauntingly from below. Renjun leaned into it, touching the end of his cigarette to the flame, holding the position long enough for it to catch, and Mark thought it looked like he was breathing fire.

“Thank you,” Renjun said. He took his cigarette to the bed, laying with his torso propped on the headboard and one leg crossed over the other. His chest expanded. He sucked down the smoke like it was a glass of water, like it was the only thing that sustained him.

Mark used the match to light the candle, too, then went back towards his chair, but Renjun called, “You don’t have to sleep over there again. It’s a big enough bed.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s your bed in the first place.”

Mark didn’t think Renjun was dangerous, but was hesitant to get too close to him regardless. Something about the boy gave him a strange feeling. He was attractive and off-putting at the same time.

Renjun patted the space beside him.

Mark went to the bed. He sat down and ensured that there was at least a foot of space between them. The cigarette smoke was unpleasant, and he might have usually stretched his head away from it, but it at least helped to cover the stench of the mattress and the carpet. Renjun took another drag, and his body gave a pleased shiver.

“How old are you?” Mark asked him.

Renjun’s pupils drifted upwards, searching his brain. Mark supposed there was no real need to keep track of your age anymore. Time meant nothing when the world was stuck in an ashen stasis.

“Eighteen, I think,” Renjun responded.

“When’s your birthday?”

“In March.”

 _Almost nineteen, then,_ Mark thought. _So he isn’t too much younger than me._ He wasn’t sure what he had expected. Renjun somehow seemed both older and younger than him at the same time. Innocent and not innocent in equal parts.

With the closeness and the candlelight, Mark felt like he could see Renjun clearly for the first time. His face should have been soft-cheeked and boyishly innocent, but it was worn away with hunger, leaving him gaunt and sharp. He should have been lovely, too, and he still was in some ways, but the loveliness had been partially hollowed out from him. Excised with a knife, chiseled hammer on handle, with a constant _thunk, thunk, thunk,_ mattress rattling against the bed frame.

“What happened to your hand?” Renjun asked.

Mark raised it. He’d cut a sleeve from the rag-shirt, and tied it around his knuckles. A little bow was tied on top.

“Nothing big.” Mark held his hand up. The blood was soaking through the fabric, a red, oily stain.

Renjun tapped his cigarette off at the top of the candle, where the wick sat dipped into a caldera-like pool. The ashes floated in the melted wax, swirling around like lava.

“What happened?” he asked again.

“Gunshot.”

“Gunshot?”

“Just a graze.”

Renjun held the cigarette in front of his lips, but hesitated before taking another drag. “You get shot at a lot?”

“More than I’d like.” Mark plucked at the bow of the bandage. He was used to being scratched up. The only time he’d been hit proper was two years ago. In his right shoulder, bullet deep enough that it broke bone. Johnny had painstakingly dug it out with some tweezers, and Mark had sworn and screamed at him the entire time. He’d even punched Johnny in the leg with his good arm, and Johnny had punched him back, close enough to the wound that the pain radiated through Mark’s whole body, and he’d finally resigned himself to letting Johnny do what he’d needed to do. No painkillers, just a blanket to bite. It still gave him trouble sometimes, a buried aching that always re-erupted at the worst times. He touched an absent-minded hand to that shoulder now, massaging the muscle as a wave of phantom pain rolled through it.

“Why?” Renjun asked. “What do you do?”

“I mind my own business. It doesn’t take much to get a bullet sent your way.” He’d been minding his own business, too, when he’d been shot. It was an ambush, just him and Johnny against two thugs on the edge of the woods. He’d been lucky that Johnny had perfect aim and quick reflexes. He’d shot them both dead within seconds. Mark still dreamt about what might have happened had he been alone. Maybe they would have killed him, maybe they would have robbed him, maybe they’d have tied his arms and legs and sold him. He’d heard lots of stories of people being trafficked. He feared he might have been close to being one of them.

The burn on Renjun’s cigarette reached his fingers. He walked to the window, tossed it out onto the pavement, then came back and immediately lit another on the candle flame. Mark wanted to tell him he should save them instead of burn through them, but Renjun didn’t seem the type that could be told what to do.

“Do you want to know how I got those cigarettes?” Mark asked.

“How?”

“I killed a man. I beat his head in with a lug wrench.”

Renjun seemed completely unaffected by this. He blinked and breathed in. The end of his cigarette glowed ember orange.

“Don’t you care about that?” Mark pressed.

“Not really. People die all the time, don’t they?”

“But this man could have lived.”

Renjun shrugged. “But he didn’t.” His gaze trailed over the filthy carpet, up to the window. Outside was the tall fence, like a wall between the motel and the trees. It seemed insurmountable. “It doesn’t matter to me what happens out there. I’ll keep living right here, where I’m safe.”

“Safe?” Mark echoed. “What’s safe about it? If someone like me could walk in here and sit in the same bed as you, then that isn’t a safe place to be.”

“You wouldn’t kill me,” Renjun said.

“No. But someone else might.”

Renjun sighed smoke. There was a heavy tension in his mouth.

“You live here?” Mark asked.

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“A long time.”

“When was the last time you left the motel?”

The light on the cigarette shone on Renjun’s palm, illuminating blue veins close to the skin. He was see-through like tissue paper, but the look in his eyes was obscure. “I don’t know. What’s the point in leaving? There’s nothing here, and there’s nothing anywhere, so I think I’ll stick with my familiar nothing.”

He had a point. In the past five years, Mark had traveled thousands of miles, and not found one thing worth holding onto. What was the point in searching when there was nothing worth searching for? He thought the reason he did it was because it gave him a purpose. If he convinced himself that there was a place worth finding, he at least had something to work towards. If not, he might have offed himself long ago.

Mark dug his feet into the sand. “There’s gotta be something. Maybe it’s far away.” He thought of the mysterious, rumored village in New England, where the waves lapped the cliffside and grass broke the ash. Sometimes, he woke with the taste of salt on his tongue, mouth watering with how badly he wanted it to be real.

Renjun gave a disbelieving snort. He went and tossed his cigarette in the grody, discolored tub, returned to the bed, and coiled himself on the mattress. “Tell me about it, then,” he said, and the words melted into a yawn. “What’s the ‘something?’”

Like he was reading a child a bedtime story, Mark began, “There’s supposed to be a place, far away from here…”

—

Mark had never replaced a cam chain before. He’d barely done any successful repairs on his bike, because the one time he’d needed it worked on Johnny had offered to help him, and they’d sat on the ground next to a toolbox and an old motorcycle repair manual and fiddled with the parts until it miraculously returned to working order. Now, on his own, he felt as if he was groping around in the dark.

It was early in the morning. The sky was white, drained of its color. The only sound was the click of the old chain against the rut as Mark tried to weed it out, prying its edge with the flat side of his screwdriver.

Faintly, in the distance, he became aware of another noise. It was a storm of yells spilling from the motel lobby windows. An intense berating he recognized as the grim man’s voice, though he could not pick out the words. Then there was a loud slam, like a body hitting a wall. Mark recalled the woman sitting at the table, and felt suddenly sorry for her. _No pity,_ he reminded himself, just as he’d had to for Renjun. He had to be cold, and as deserved as it might be to shoot a man who mistreated his wife, those bullets needed to be saved for his own protection. If Mark stepped in to serve every justice where it was needed, he’d use up every bullet left in the world. It was an unwinnable battle. He frowned and worked harder at the chain, so the metallic rattle drowned out the shouting.

The bell at the gate rang. The man in the lobby came marching out over the lawn to answer it, leaving whatever war he’d been waging behind. Mark watched curiously from behind his motorcycle. It was the first time he’d ever seen another customer enter the motel grounds.

The figure appeared to be another man, wearing a navy raincoat and pulling behind him a wheeled suitcase. He exchanged a few words with the motel owner through the gate before being allowed in, and following through to the lobby. The suitcase wheels screeched over the dirt.

After a minute, he came back out. The screeching got louder as he moved in Mark’s direction. He raised a hand as if to say _hello, I’m not dangerous._ Mark stared back, still feeling wary after the incident with the man at the garage.

“Nice bike,” the man said. He was younger than Mark had expected, perhaps thirty-five. His hair was so blond it was white, curled close to his head. He had a tattoo crawling up the side of his neck, though most of it was covered by the hood of his coat.

“Thanks,” Mark grunted.

“It broken?”

“Yeah.”

“Know what you’re doin’?”

Mark dropped his screwdriver onto the ground. He did not know what he was doing. “Why? You know something about fixing bikes?”

“A thing or two.” The man knelt beside him. “Oh, a Harley. I used to have one of these. Not this model, though.” He leaned in to peer into the place where Mark had removed the engine cover, turning his head sideways to try and get the best light. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Cam chain’s junk.” Mark lifted the new one where it lay on the ground like a dead snake, and let it flop back down. “I don’t know how to replace it, though.”

“I can show you.”

Mark did not trust this man. No one did something out of the kindness of their heart. Not because they were heartless, but because they were survivalists. The man was going to ask for something in exchange. Mark decided to head it off right away and kill the suspense.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“I’m being a good neighbor.”

“You aren’t my neighbor.”

“You don’t know that. Where you from?”

Mark pressed his lips together. The man was playing a strange game. “Sacramento.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Antelope.”

The man broke into a smile. “No kidding. I used to live in North Highlands.”

“No kidding,” Mark echoed.

“Yeah. You know the park off Palmerson? I was on a baseball team, and we played there all the time.”

Mark knew the park off Palmerson. It wasn’t far from his house. He’d used to go there with his parents and eat picnic lunches and play on the jungle gym. He considered it an essential part of his childhood.

“Yeah,” Mark said.

“Ever play baseball?”

“In middle school.”

“Middle school…” The man rubbed his chin. He looked Mark up and down, seemingly trying to gauge his age. “That must have been pretty close to the time that…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He stared off towards the road.

 _The time that everything ended,_ Mark concluded. The man was right. Mark had been only twelve. His heart lurched. Thinking about the past made him weak. It made him a kid, not a killer.

The man noticed the far-off look in Mark’s eyes. He took the screwdriver where it lay on the ground and began to work at the chain.

“What are you doing?” Mark asked.

“Said I’d show you how.”

“You — you don’t have to do it for free.”

“I don’t mind it.”

“I’ll give you something.” He’d gotten the chain for free. His budget was a bit more flexible now. “Forty?”

The man shrugged. “If it makes you feel better. I told you, I’m just a good neighbor.”

“Yeah. I’ve got some cash in my room.” Mark stood and went to the stairs. He’d been nervous about leaving his cash in his bike, so he’d hid it in the motel room, underneath the bathroom sink and tucked behind the pipe. He entered now, twisting the key in the lock and sliding in beside the dresser, still displaced from his moving it back and forth. His eyes stopped at the bed, remembering how Renjun had fallen asleep beside him last night. This time, Mark had been the one to stay awake longer, and he’d had a few minutes to watch Renjun. The boy had breathed so lightly, he’d looked dead. It had made Mark want to impulsively shake him awake, but he hadn’t. He’d just watched and wondered how Renjun could possibly feel comfortable sleeping in front of a stranger.

Renjun was gone again in the morning before Mark opened his eyes. He was good at slipping away like a ghost.

Mark held his breath in the bathroom, because the sludge from the bathtub spout had begun to stink worse over time as if it was rotting. He ducked, opened the sink cabinet, and tugged the wad of cash from the fork in the pipe. Carefully, he counted it again, making sure it was all there before hurrying back out the door.

When he reached the bottom step, he could not see the man by his bike.

Cautiously, he looped around in a wide circle. The bike still sat where he’d left it, engine cover on the ground beside it. No man, no trace of him. Mark took his pistol from his belt and held it up halfway, preparing for any sudden reappearance.

He waited a full minute, then edged back towards the bike. At first, he thought it was untouched, and that perhaps the man had simply excused himself to use the bathroom or drop his suitcase in his room. But he realized with a jolt that the new chain was gone from the ground. He spun, wondering if he’d misplaced it. He threw open the underseat cargo.

His food, his knife, and his tarp were missing. He swore, kicked a pebble along the ground, then stood with hands pressed to the motel wall, forcing himself to breathe calmly.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” he spat. “I’m a fucking idiot.” There was no point in trusting people, or extending them the benefit of the doubt. Why hadn’t he watched out his room window to make sure nothing funny happened? What had happened to his common sense? Johnny had always told him he was naive. He tapped the barrel of his gun against the motel brick, trying to figure out where to go from here. The food could be replaced. The chain was not so easily acquired. Last time, it had cost a life.

He kept his pistol out as he marched to the motel lobby. He pounded the door twice, and the owner man answered with a cold glare.

“What do you want?” he asked. There was a cigarette in his hand, smoke furling from it, and Mark could only think that it smelled like Renjun.

“The man who arrived this morning,” Mark said. “What room is he in?”

“Why should I tell you that?”

“Because he’s a thief.”

The man eyed Mark’s pistol. “If you start trouble around here, you’ll be out. I’m not about to be cleaning blood from my ceilings.”

Mark huffed indignantly. Getting his things back had felt like the most important thing, but it was not more important than having a relatively safe place to sleep. Perhaps he would run into the stealing man later on his own, in which case he wouldn’t hold back. For now, he replaced his pistol at his belt and gave the man in front of him a stiff nod.

Just before he turned to leave, there was a flash of movement in the corner of the room. Mark saw it was the woman, standing half inside the doorway at the back. Like this, with her face partially hidden in the dark of the hall, he realized that she looked a lot like Renjun, who he’d only ever seen in a similar half-light by the candle flame.

He placed this thought at the back of his mind and went back out into the yard.

—

It took him a long time to properly cool down. He took the rest of the things from his cargo, no longer trusting them on their own, and moved his bike around the corner where it was better hidden. He sat at his window with his tools and his matches and his tin of toiletries and tried to ignore the rumbling of his stomach. He did not eat that day. He hoped for better luck tomorrow.

The wind was nothing, so the ash did not even move. No TV. Mark traced the grain of the wood on the window sill for entertainment. There was a small carving at the far end of it, the initials _FC + SJ_. Mark liked to imagine that these people had stayed at this motel years ago, when it was still an ordinary motel with proper plumbing and working lights and no big gate around the perimeter. Maybe they were young lovers on one stop of their roadtrip, spending the night before they left early in the morning to see the ocean. Then they sat at the waterside, holding each other’s hands, thinking the bigness of the world was a miracle, and that feeling small was a blessing.

He looked up. Renjun had appeared outside on the parking block. He faced towards the gate so Mark could only see the back of his head, the narrow bend of his shoulders which were raised to brace against the cold.

Then another person appeared. The man with the suitcase. He had no suitcase now, but Mark recognized his gangly figure and the dark edge of his tattoo. He approached Renjun, hands in his pockets, looking colder than he had when he’d spoken with Mark earlier; he did not need to deceive in a situation like this. He had all the control. Renjun stood, seemed to exchange a few words with the man, then followed him to the first row of rooms. Mark watched them enter through the first door of the top floor.

Two thoughts occurred at once. The first was that Mark now knew where the man was staying. He could use that info to his benefit, march right over and beat on the door with his pistol ready. But Mark’s anger had dulled a bit over the course of the day, and he knew it was better to play it smart. He would go over in the morning, when it was light enough to see.

The second thought was the obvious one: the man had hired Renjun to have sex. This _did_ compel Mark to grab his pistol off the dresser, though he knew it was unwarranted. He barely knew Renjun. Renjun had done this a thousand times. It was how he survived. Mark had no reason to disrupt one person’s strategy for survival. His own strategy wasn’t any more wholesome.

He tore himself from the window and went to the bed. His third night, and no way to leave if he’d wanted to. The gate outside was beginning to feel like a cage, so he turned so his body faced the far wall and shut his eyes.

—

Mark held his pistol inside the flap of his coat. He walked down the stairs from his room in the early morning haze, eyes fixed on the thieving man’s door.

He nearly tripped over Renjun’s legs, which were extended off the parking block over the concrete.

“What are you doing?” Mark asked. He’d never seen him in daylight before. It took the edges from his face, making him look younger and softer. It made Mark uneasy.

Renjun looked up at him. There was a huge bruise covering his cheek, purple-black and pink at its edge like a watercolor fringe.

“Hi,” Renjun said.

“What are you doing?” Mark asked again. “I’ve never seen you out during the day.”

“Had a feeling I would run into you.” He stood and took a step to the side. Behind where he’d been sitting were his cans of food, his knife, his tarp, and his cam chain. “These yours?”

Mark startled at the sight of them. Just the very things he’d been going to collect, intending to spill blood for. Renjun had saved him one kill. One evil act.

“How?” Mark murmured, stooping to pick them up.

“Stole them. He passed out, snoring like an earthquake. So I stuffed them under my shirt and bolted.”

“How did you know they were mine?”

Renjun grabbed the knife before Mark could. He turned up the side of the wood handle. “It says, _To M.L._ Are your initials M.L.?”

“Yes, but you didn’t know that.”

Renjun shrugged. “It was a guess. Plus, the chain looked like something that’d go on your bike. He’d just left them lying on the stand — if they weren’t yours, I got a bunch of free stuff.”

“Do you steal a lot?”

“If I can get away with it.”

Mark took the knife and put it, along with the rest of his stuff, back where it belonged in the cargo compartment. “Is that man still here?” he asked suspiciously.

“No. He left an hour ago or so. He was a weirdo. I bet he had a body in that suitcase.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Now that he had his chain back, Mark could finish his repairs and get the hell out. That motel was beginning to wear on his nerves. He plopped on the ground beside his bike and pried the engine cover back off.

To his surprise, Renjun sat beside him. “Who gave you the knife? It said _to_ — it was a gift, huh?”

“Just a friend of mine,” Mark responded dismissively. He didn’t like talking about the past. It was like giving away a piece of yourself. Granting someone access to a room you’d bolted shut ages ago. He retaliated by asking, “Where’d you get that bruise? Looks awful.”

Renjun clearly caught the change in subject, but rolled with it anyway. “A customer,” he explained. “I was busy with him, and all of a sudden he went ‘too much teeth’ and whopped me right in the side of the face.” He slapped a hand down at the crook of his arm, imitating the sound of a punch — a comical sound effect, as if he’d been telling a joke. He was smiling, too. Mark had to look away. He didn’t see anything funny about it. He wondered if Renjun just liked to watch him squirm in discomfort.

Mark chose to ignore it and began work to remove the old chain again. He still hadn’t figured out what he was doing. He wanted to leave, but there was no leaving if he couldn’t finish his repair.

“Whatcha doing?” Renjun said.

“Trying to get the chain off,” Mark said. He lifted its edge, but it snapped back down, nearly clipping his fingers.

“Can’t you take that thing off?” Renjun tapped the gear the chain was run around. “Just take it right out?”

“Uh.”

“Unscrew it.”

Mark picked his screwdriver off the ground and slid its head into the slot. Renjun propped his bruised cheek on his hand, watching, still smiling. Mark turned the handle. The gear popped off and dislodged the chain.

“Oh,” Mark said.

“I told you.”

“Yes, you’re very clever.” Mark did not want to admit that he’d been trying to figure it out for days. He fed the chain out and flung it across the lot.

“Are you mad that I’m smarter than you?” Renjun asked.

“Scram,” Mark said.

Renjun giggled and walked away. He stopped to kick the chain in the air, like a child with a deflated soccer ball. then went to the fence. He stood with his nose nearly pressed to it, fingers woven through it. He seemed to be waiting for something, but Mark didn’t know what.

He stayed there for a long time, watching the ash skip along the empty road. Mark looked away and focused on his work, freedom so close he could taste it. He eased the new chain in, looping it around the gears, relieved to find that it fit perfectly into the grooves.

When he looked up again, Renjun was gone. It didn’t matter. He would be leaving him behind in the morning anyway.

—

It was dark when there was a knock on Mark’s door.

He hadn’t really been sleeping anyway, kept up by the stinging in his hand where the cut had reopened. It only took him a few seconds to get out of bed and grab his pistol. Finger readied on the trigger, thumb angled back to flick the safety. The matted carpet muffled his footsteps as he slunk towards the door, gun half-raised. Like any motel, the door had a peephole; Mark lowered his head and peered through it.

It was Renjun. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, peering up and down the second-floor walk like he expected someone to appear at any moment.

Mark unlocked the door and opened it a crack. “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Can I come in?” He smelled like he’d just finished a cigarette, though he didn’t carry the usual calm that came with it. He was bending his knuckles between his fingers. The bruise on his jaw had yellowed. There was a cut on his bottom lip.

“I guess so,” Mark said. He wasn’t sure what to think of it. He’d always been the one to invite Renjun up, coaxing him with cash and cigarettes like one would coax a cat with catnip.

Renjun walked to the end of the bed and sat down. He didn’t say anything.

“Is something wrong?” Mark asked.

“No.”

Mark joined him on the bed. “Do you need money?”

“I’m not going to ask you for more money.”

“But you need it.”

Renjun stared at the door.

Mark removed a few folded bills from his pocket. It was hard to care about losing money when Renjun seemed so unlike himself. He counted out eighty dollars, and pushed them into Renjun’s hands.

Renjun limply accepted the money. Like before, he turned it over, as if checking to make sure it was real, this time more literally — it was as if he didn’t really believe it was there. He pressed his thumb into the faded image of the White House, cracking its columns.

“Thanks,” he said.

Mark nodded. They both stared at the door.

There was a touch on Mark’s knee, the ghost-like weight of Renjun’s hand. His face drifted closer in the dark, and his lips bumped into Mark’s, uncertain, half-committed.

Mark moved his head back. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Renjun said.

The silence was deafening like a gunshot.

“I was trying to pay you back,” Renjun said. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

Renjun blinked, as if he really believed it for the first time.

Mark brushed a thumb over his mouth. The blood from Renjun’s cut-up lip had transferred and stained his skin.

“What happened this time?” he asked.

Renjun, as if his bones were brittle glass, crawled delicately over the bed to lay down across it. Mark guessed the cut on his lip was not the only part of him that had been damaged. Renjun stared out the window, and Mark could not tell if he was looking at the yellow square of the lobby window or the gate of the fence.

Mark remembered, suddenly. “The woman at the lobby,” he said. “Is that your mom?”

One corner of Renjun’s lips raised. “How d’you figure?”

“She looks like you. Or, you look like her.”

Renjun made a gasp of a laugh and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“Is that guy your dad?”

“Do I look like the son of a white man to you?”

“I guess not,” Mark agreed. “Your step-dad?”

“Yes. He doesn’t like you. Not after that time I came up for the cigarettes — he saw me go with you. I didn't have any money to bring him back in the morning." He fingered the bruise on his cheek. Not from a customer, but the man in control. The punishment for a lazy night.

Things went quiet again. Mark waited, patient, feeling as though he was on the precipice of something.

“I never knew my real dad,” Renjun said.

Mark inched closer over the bare mattress. It creaked like a door spilling open.

“He left when my mom was pregnant. He didn’t even know about me. I would always ask her when I was little, ‘Where’s dad?’ and she’d say, ‘He went away from us.’ But I think she still loved him a lot, because she would always talk about him so highly — he was handsome and smart and kind. He used to be an army soldier, and he’d come back from fighting overseas to go to college here in California. But he was a family man, too, and that was part of the reason he ended up moving so far away. He was going home to his parents.” Renjun shut his eyes. “I wish he’d known about me. He could have been _my_ family man.”

“Why didn’t she tell him?”

“I don’t know. She never tells me anything.” Renjun swallowed. “When I was a kid, every time I saw a man in public I thought could be him, I’d shake my mom’s arm and say, ‘Is that him? Is that Dad?’ and she’d tell me to be quiet. And even though I never even met him, I feel like I can still see him sometimes. Like, I’ll just be walking along and then something will flash in the corner of my eye, and I just get this gut feeling that it’s him — then I turn around, and there’s nothing there.”

“Did he die?” Mark asked.

“I don’t know,” Renjun said. “After the whole world went to shit, there was no way to find out. Not as if I’d been able to contact him before. But now… he really feels impossible to find.”

Mark could tell by the way he said it that he _wanted_ to find him. Renjun was aching for the father he’d never known. Even if he seemed too good to be true.

“Did your mother ever say where he went?”

“Last I heard, she said he was living in Cape Elizabeth.”

“Where is that?”

“New England, I think.”

New England. Cold ocean, soft dirt, the chance at a new life.

Mark watched the rise and fall of Renjun’s chest in the dark. A tide going in, a tide going out.

—

Mark opened his eyes. Renjun was not in his bed. The money Mark had given him was left behind, crumpled on the dresser.

The sun was barely peeking through in the distance, shining brown through the thick ashen fog like candlelight through a paper bag. It was still early, perhaps six AM, something incomplete and inbetween. He already knew what he had to do. He took his pistol from where he’d wedged it under the mattress, double-checked it was fully loaded, and carried it down the stairs and across the yard to the lobby door.

He quietly slipped around the corner, pressing his ear to the wall. The window beside him was blocked by the curtains. He couldn’t see anything through it. There was a bang from inside, then a shout. Mark didn’t want to hear it, but he forced himself to keep listening. Heavy footsteps, a sharp crack, a cry that sounded like Renjun’s.

He went back around to the door and knocked.

There was a half-minute of waiting, accompanied by a new, eerie silence. Then the rattle of the lock, and the door cracked open. The woman — Renjun’s mother — peered through, her eyes black and blank as stone.

Mark raised the end of his pistol in her face. “Let me in,” he said.

Her black stone eyes widened, and she couldn’t seem to decide whether to try and shut the door on him, or do as he said. He made it simple and shouldered through. The door smacked her and she stumbled back into the front table. Mark quickly scanned the room. The rifle was leaning against the wall. He aimed and shot twice at its trigger, shattering the mechanism and pockmarking the side of the barrel.

The commotion alerted the man, who came running in from the back hallway, dragging up the loose waistband of his trousers where they’d been unbelted at the front. Mark glowered at the sight of it. He trained his pistol on him.

“Where is he?” he demanded.

“Get the fuck out,” the man yelled, clumsy in his anger, too blinded by it to fear a bullet. Mark wanted to make sure he would regret it. He snapped his arm down and shot at the man’s left knee. The crunch of the bone was like a dinner plate breaking. He collapsed halfway. Mark shot out the other knee. The woman screamed and cowered against the wall.

A pool of blood was spreading over the chipped linoleum floor. The man groaned, clutching himself.

Mark pointed his pistol back at the woman. “Give me all of your money.”

She scrambled to the kitchen counter and turned over an old sugar canister. A large roll of bills spilled out. Mark stepped in and scraped them up, flicking through them. About six hundred dollars. “Is this all of it?” he asked.

The woman nodded.

Mark shoved the bills into his pant pocket. He jerked his head towards the man as he lay shaking on the floor. The woman took the hint, and rushed down to his side.

The hallway was dark, but short. Mark edged down it, gun still ready just in case he walked into a surprise. But there were no surprises, just a messy bedroom with a tipped dresser and a smashed floor-length mirror and Renjun sitting in a ball on the bed, hands over his ears. He’d been stripped of his t-shirt. His nose was bleeding, mixing with snot and tears.

Mark impulsively turned the gun on him, too sucked into that mode to shake it off immediately. He realized what he was doing, and forced the gun down to his side.

“Renjun,” he said. “Are you coming with me?”

Renjun opened his eyes. He seemed only vaguely aware of what was happening. He shook like a newborn kitten.

Mark was resolute. “Put your clothes on,” he said.

Renjun crawled to the edge of the bed and picked his shirt up off the floor. Mark could see all the vertebrae in his back, the jut of his shoulder blades that seemed sharp enough to break the skin.

“Do you have a coat?” Mark asked.

“No,” Renjun sobbed.

The step-father’s coat was hung on the frame of the broken mirror. Mark stepped over an abandoned belt to point at it. “Take that one.”

Renjun did as he was told. The coat was so long on him that it nearly reached his knees. He wiped his nose on the sleeve.

“Let’s go,” Mark said.

Renjun slowly followed him back down the hall into the kitchen.

He froze when he saw the blood on the floor. He put a hand over his mouth, face completely white. Mark had to wonder if there was any emotional attachment there. Maybe Renjun had some kind of fondness for his mother and step-father, no matter how undeserved. They’d sold him like his body was something meant for consumption, forced the money he’d gotten out of his hands though it had been earned through his own sacrifices, and barely fed him, if the look of him was anything to go by. But you only had one mother, and there could sometimes be no way to divorce yourself from that love. It was woven into you from birth.

Renjun's mother looked up at him. She opened her mouth, said nothing, and returned attention to her husband, pressing a hand to his pale, sweaty cheek.

Mark grabbed Renjun’s sleeve. “Let’s go,” he said again, softly.

They walked out into the yard. The sun refracted through the dense fog so that it looked more like a line than a circle. Mark told Renjun to stand back and cover his ears, and shot one last time at the lock on the gate. The metal sparked and shattered, a few stray shards flying and burying themselves in the dirt. Mark tore the gate open. He walked to his bike and sat down.

Renjun took a moment to adjust on the seat behind him. He was still shaking. Mark took both his hands and wrapped them around his middle, making sure the grip was firm before he turned the key. The distorted rumble was gone. Just the clean rev of the engine and the open road in front of them.

Mark had a half-tank of gas, one bullet left, a strange boy on the back of his bike. He kicked off through the gate. His hair flew up. The collar of his jacket whipped against his face. He smelled ash and far-off rain.

Renjun’s fingers twisted into Mark’s shirt, nails digging into his stomach, clutching him so tightly it hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!
> 
> i've labeled this as being 5 parts, though that's only a rough guess. updates are not regularly planned; however, i don't think they'll be TOO inconsistent. maybe one a month? every two months? idk
> 
> come talk to me on social media! i look forward to ur feedback as always!!
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/playing_prince) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/playing_prince)


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